• Tachanka [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      it would be even funnier if US ships sank each other in the red sea out of paranoia about ansarollah (“houthis”) like that cop who got scared of an acorn and shot his own vehicle.

    • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      it seems increasingly possible, the article last week celebrating the hard working navy boys doing 24/7 launch and recovery operations on the air craft carrier didn’t really broach the subject of why they suddenly started having to have a 24/7 defense screen of fighter jets in the air. Seems like they either don’t trust their missile defenses or they’re running low on their missile defense munitions.

      • Parzivus [any]@hexbear.net
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        9 months ago

        They admitted to shooting down a missile with CIWS, which is basically saying “it got close enough to shoot with a giant machine gun,” and even that can spray the ship with shrapnel. They’re definitely keen not to have that happen again.
        I do wonder how much jet fuel a carrier can actually hold, like how long can they do 24/7 flights for? Do they have tankers for jet fuel as well?

        • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          9 months ago

          They can refuel ships at sea so I assume they can keep the jet fuel topped up. They don’t have any ability to reload ship-launched missiles at sea, though, so if they run out they have to go back to a port with the capability to resupply those. I understand they fire two anti-missile missiles for every interception attempt, so it seems pretty likely they’d have ripped through their magazines pretty quickly.

        • Evilphd666 [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          9 months ago

          Yes. Shit tons of fuel. Stored around and underneath on the bottom of the carriers. We used to grab a bit when we needed to clean up paint spills. JP5 is some potent stuff.

          Then they duck out and get regular refuelings at sea. These refuelings at sea are a particualr vulnerable time for both the merchant marine tanker ship and the carrier. They are very very close to each other, hooked up by multiple lines, have almost no maneuverability during the procedure.

    • D61 [any]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      Wonder if the US Navy ships have to do the same thing as SEALS when one of them goes down?

    • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      I looked up the range of one of the british destroyers in the area and it had a 25km by 25km range.

      The sea is fucking BIG. They have fuck all anti air coverage and gaps are easy to find.

        • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          9 months ago

          They’re using the ships to create a patchwork of anti-air defence in the hope they can stop things but the size of the area to cover is simply massive and it’s very easy to fly missiles/drones around the perimeter of the ships with a little intel.

          Iran has satellites and their own launch system for satellites so my assumption is that they have fairly good intel on ship locations in the area, provided to the Houthis by Iran. This is the only logical way they could be as successful as they have been.

  • zifnab25 [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    I’m old enough to remember when Iraq was supposed to have the 5th largest military in the world, and Operation Desert Shield was the most comprehensive conflict our nation had embarked upon since Vietnam.

    Now we’ve scrubbed Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam from the brain logs. A militia of Radio Shack nerds living in one of the poorest countries on earth now present the biggest threat to US Naval Operations since the Empire of the Rising Sun waged war against the entire Pacific Rim.

    Really makes you think…

    • Tachanka [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      the entire pretense of US military strategy is to maintain so many layers of unrivaled superiority over the enemy, that the pea at the bottom of the princess’s stack of mattresses must be presented as the biggest threat to the princess’s vertebrae of all time

      • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        9 months ago

        I remember being told a version of that story where the princess ended up alone, because no one would want to be with a person who complained about a pea beneath 20 mattresses

    • As a vet of the occupation of Iraq, I somewhat share your sentiment. I feel that if I’d been killed over there it would have been justified and morally correct.

      However, I don’t really hope for their deaths. What I hope for is that they have a radicalizing experience like I did.

      When I speak critically in public about the empire, chuds and libs listen pretty intently. I think it would do a hell of a lot of good if there were more of us speaking up about the evils of the American empire with first hand knowledge. I wish it didn’t happen this way because I participated in a great evil, but people love to hear a story of change and reform. Sometimes it takes a story of drama and peril for average people to start thinking critically.

      • artificialset [she/her, fae/faer]@hexbear.net
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        9 months ago

        the only problem with hoping they get radicalised is how much damage they can do in the meantime. I truly hope as many as possible die quickly. they made their choice to serve the death machine

        • I mean, yeah, but if they were anything like me in my situation they didn’t know better. And I’m a firm believer that when people know better, they do better (at least among working class folks). I was wildly insulated from critical thinking, literally in a cult lite evangelical area. I hope more for the destruction of the machines, internal infrastructure, and economic support of the military. That would of course be the death nail. But like you said, in the mean time… Fish food is fine.

          I guess I feel for them in their ignorance because I can see so much of myself in them. And I try to be charitable to individuals, but hold a ruthless contempt for systems. I try to keep a sense of humility in all this, because I think any one of us could be like that if we were placed in the right material conditions, it’s sad really. Then there’s the kids just trying to escape poverty. Shits fucked up yo.

          At the end of the day, what I’m saying is… Death to America.

          • artificialset [she/her, fae/faer]@hexbear.net
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            9 months ago

            but if they were anything like me in my situation they didn’t know better.

            sorry, but for all vets (you included tbh) not knowing better is not good enough for me. I think being ruthless to imperialists is the way. when a troop occupies a country, I stop caring why they’ve chosen to do that. the side that causes the destruction gets to explain and hand waive why they did it and I think that’s wrong

            • Yeah, as someone is actively doing imperial violence, all bets are off. Like I said, I would have deserved to get got for being over there. I don’t think it’s an excuse, it’s context of how the war machine consumes human souls and as fuel to take human lives and converters it into treats and slop. The better we understand these processes, the better we can apply pressure on every weak point.

              I’m trying to keep a materialist analysis in mind, it’s how we’re going kill the beast.

  • Evilphd666 [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    Houthis are the hero of heros bravely resisting the empire and fighting in solidarity of the Palestinian people.

    I said to my other Navy co worker when he mentioned something of a ‘new weapon’ being used against US ships crying about Houthis but being a Libertarian ancaptain he was more concerned about the treat flow “commerce”.

    It’s their land and sea and they demaned we stop arming a genocide. They have every right to blockade that area on humanitarian grounds same as we attack others because of our sanctions or whatever. All the Houthis want is for us to stop supplying weapons to prolong this genocide. It isn’t worth putting our people at risk.

  • Chapo_is_Red [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    Largest naval battle since WWII:

    Two of the biggest blue water navies in the world and their allies versus guys with speed boats and rockets

    • Adkml [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      Its the largest naval battle they’ve undertaken because everyrhing else has just been shooting missles at land based targets.

      And by targets I mean hospitals.

  • D61 [any]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    Wooden drones that buzz the flight deck dropping paperclips to get sucked into jet intakes for the win